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Bugatti is now building homages to its own homage

By topgear, 03 December 2019

Only Bugatti could get away with building a limited-run series of cars that are designed to pay tribute to its own one-off, which was itself designed to be a tribute to a historic limited-run series of cars.

Still with us? Right okay, we’ll explain. The pictures above show the new Bugatti Chiron Noire Élégance, although there is also a Chiron Noire Sportive that we don’t yet have images of. Both of these have been designed because Bugatti received considerable interest in ‘La Voiture Noire’ – the £12m one-off hypercar that was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year.

La Voiture Noire was itself an homage to the 1936 Type 57 Atlantic – or more specifically the missing Type 57 Atlantic, which was lost when the Nazis seized Bugatti’s Molsheim factory in 1940 and the car mysteriously disappeared from the escaping train.

In our minds, that’s something well deserving of a few different special editions. So, to the Chiron Noires…

As you can see, Bugatti has left the Élégance in its bare carbonfibre body, teaming that with a black grille and black enamel badging for the full night-mode effect. The Bugatti C-shape is still prominent, though, and is finished in a polished aluminium.

On the Sportive, that C-shape is painted matte black, as is the body, the wheels, the front splitter and the grille. Yep, it’ll be a properly stealthy Chiron. The interiors of both apparently match their exterior colours, with plenty of black and a few shiny touches on the Élégance.

Both are also still powered by that mesmeric 8.0-litre W16 engine, and Bugatti says that – for an extra €100,000 on top of the €3million base price – you can have either Noire spec on a Chiron Sport. Yes please.

Only 20 will be built altogether, and we can imagine that after the reaction to La Voiture Noire, these might just be quite popular with the rather rich folk of the world. What do you reckon, Internet?

STORYGreg Potts

TopGear Singapore

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